Richard Crouse

SYNOPSIS: Based on Peter Brown’s award-winning, #1 New York Times bestseller of the same name, “The Wild Robot,” a new animated film starring the voices of Lupita Nyong’o and Pedro Pascal, and now playing in theatres, features a shipwrecked robot named ROZZUM unit 7134— “Roz” for short—who develops a parental bond with an orphaned gosling. “A ROZZUM always completes its task,” she says.

CAST: The Wild Robot Lupita Nyong’o, Pedro Pascal, Kit Connor, Bill Nighy, Stephanie Hsu, Mark Hamill, Catherine O’Hara, Matt Berry, Ving Rhames. Directed by Chris Sanders.

REVIEW: The animated “The Wild Robot” will put you in the mind of “The Iron Giant,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “WALL-E,” but carves out its own, unique, rewarding space. Brimming with compassion, humor and kindness, it’s an exciting adventure story with a big, beating heart.

It’s a deceptively simple film. Roz’s sleek character design and the unpretentious premise of finding your logical, not necessarily biological family, are brought to life by the power of a great voice cast, inventive animation and director Chris Sanders’s vivid imagination.

Roz (voiced by Lupita Nyong’o) is a bigger BB-8 style robot, mechanical and, when we first meet her, mission driven with no visible signs of compassion behind her crystal blue electronic eyes. At first the matriarchal relationship with the gosling named Brightbill (voice of Kit Connor) is a job, nothing more. “A ROZZUM always completes its task,” she says.

But as time passes a warmth appears in her eyes and voice as Nyong’o reveals the bot’s hidden humanity. She’s less Siri and more a mother. “Sometimes to survive,” she says, “we must become more than we were programmed to be.”

Nyong’o does the heavy lifting, shifting Roz from automaton to sentient being, but she is supported by a terrific cast.

Catherine O’Hara brings comedic relief as frazzled possum mother Pinktail. As Fink, a fox who undergoes a transformation from predator to patriarchal figure, fan favorite Pedro Pascal brings sly humor and, as robot Vontra, Oscar nominees Stephanie Hsu is the icy-but-wacky voice of authoritarianism.

“The Wild Robot” is a wonderful film for the whole family. It has humor, adventure and uplift, but mostly, it has heart and the makings of a classic. “Was this task completed to your satisfaction?” Roz asks several times in the film. The answer is an emphatic yes.